Pressure Builds On NBC To Explain Why It's Ruining The Olympics

Yesterday, we invited NBC to answer
a few simple questions about why it is ruining the Olympics
for millions of Americans by refusing to show events live and
instead saving everything for a stale evening highlight reel.

So far, this invitation has been greeted with deafening silence.

The answer, almost certainly, is "money," but we are actually
interested in the details.

Why is it to NBC's benefit to ruin the Olympics for
millions? Why not just show the events live on subsidiary
networks and then show them AGAIN on the puffy highlight
reel?

And inasmuch as NBC seems intent on ruining the Olympics
regardless of how much we and others scream, why not explain to
America why it is choosing to do this? The answer can't be
that appalling, can it? Presumably it's all about
trying to get the biggest possible evening audience for those
precious sponsors, never mind that half the evening Olympics
audience is so bored or angry that they're doing something else
or wishing they could throw their remotes through their TVs.

Inquiring minds want to know why, in the Internet age, when
Olympics results are available in real time everywhere, including
on NBC's Olympics web site, NBC is refusing to explain its
coverage decisions to America. And as NBC sits in its
polished silence, the pressure is building on the network to say
something.

Every day, we get emails from Canadians crowing about how awesome
their TV coverage is. Every day, we watch the Twitter
stream cursing NBC for its tone-deafness. Every day we get
steamed emails from Americans furious that a greedy corporation
is coming between them and their favorite events.

And every evening, as we sit in the same room as a TV showing the
highlights of events we knew the results of hours earlier
(occasionally glancing up from our laptops to see whether the
replay is remotely interesting), we also shake our heads at the
lengths NBC goes to create the impression that all these replays
are actually happening now.

"And now let's go back to Grouse Mountain for the
thrilling conclusion of the Women's
Snowboardcross!" the once-authentic-seeming Bob
Costas will gush, as he sits in some studio with a fake fire
flickering in the background.

And the broadcast will cut away to a tape from hours earlier, of
an event that everyone who has visited a news site or listened to
a radio or talked to a friend that afternoon has known the
outcome of for, seemingly, forever.

Well, fat chance that's going to happen. Because even if
you could muzzle the New York Times, you couldn't shut down
Twitter. And in the age of Twitter, any monopoly on
information companies like the New York Times (and NBC) once held
has long since evaporated.

NBC is run by reasonable people. Why is it so much to ask
for them to explain to the country why they are ruining a
sporting event that they brag so much about being associated with
that happens only every four years?